City Council Agenda and Packet 2019 02 05

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City Council Meeting Minutes January 22, 2019 Page 7 of 16 Madeline Cowell, 954 Elm Street, stated she wants to learn more and see other concepts to know what options there are moving forward. Mayor Muckle thanked everyone for their comments. Councilmember Maloney stated there has been a misperception this process was done in secret. This was done in public and this is an informational item and a conceptual design. He noted the LRC is about urban renewal and economic stimulation and they are trying to find ways to deal with long term economic stimulation which is the role we ask them to play. He stated all email and comments from residents inform the deliberative process. Councilmember Maloney stated the gist of this topic is long term economic sustainability. Council needs to be looking at what will lead to economic sustainability and whether a parking garage is part of that. He agreed the block and scale at this location is incompatible with downtown and the neighborhood. Councilmember Maloney stated the parking need downtown and that there is not a huge problem most days; there are other opportunities to optimize parking downtown. When looking at the costs for building and the operating and maintenance it is very significant over a 20 year period. We likely won't recover those costs from sales tax. The reason Council asked LRC to do this was to define a shared vision with the LRC for economic sustainability. This is one potential opportunity but there are other areas to invest in to help with long term sustainability. We need a better vision on what we want and where to invest for long term sustainability. Councilmember Stolzmann stated she supports many of the changes made in the downtown, but has consistently been against this for three reasons 1) compatibility, 2) costs and 3) short and long term needs have not been demonstrated. She felt Council needs to give the community peace of mind we are not continuing down this path. Council and LRC need to work better together to collectively move forward. Council should give staff direction not to spend any more time or resources on this topic. Councilmember Loo stated what we have now is more facts than we had before. Council asked LRC to look at this site specifically because the City owns it. Now we know using this site as conceptualized is not popular. She noted the costs of underground parking is incredibly expensive. She thinks there are a lot of misconceptions of what this was and where it was going. There are ways to disguise the mass and scale of the parking with retail. This is not about the current parking situation, but is about the future. One of the reasons why we aren't categorized as "best town" any longer is the cost of housing. Louisville is expensive and there is a need to understand that. If one looks at studies about people not using cars it is in very high density areas and we don't have that. We don't have the volume for transit service but if we talk about higher density in Louisville residents will pack the house in opposition.